I was in Ahmedabad, India a few weeks ago and came by these four kids on the side of the street here. It’s actually a two-shot sequence. The girl in the red dress there in the middle off to the left actually made eye contact with me a couple of shots earlier. I was able to grab that. But the image didn’t really come out that well because there were some other things in the way. But then, just a split second later, I got this image. It struck me because these kids are my daughter’s age, and they’re obviously in circumstances that I can’t even imagine.
As soon as they saw me with my camera they gave me these three beautiful smiles right on cue. And especially the little kid in the purple shirt in the front there, she’s really hamming it up. And look at the expression on the girl on the left in the light blue pants. She looks a little shy as she’s holding her hands that way. But just four really, really beautiful smiles. And that was it. I only got two shots, one that didn’t work, and this one that worked well. I was thinking of cropping off the bottom a little bit there. But then I said, you know, I’m just going to leave the crop straight out of the camera because then you can see that they’re actually on the sidewalk.
I think about them. When I shoot people on the streets in circumstances that I can’t even imagine, I often think about them afterwards. I wonder where they are now. I wonder if they are ok. They seem like good kids.
